Multidisciplinary research teams from Stanford University and HPI work on diverse topics concerned with Design Thinking, its process, method, interaction patterns and tools in order to investigate the phenomena of innovation.

analyzeD – A Virtual Design Observatory (HPI/CDR)

PI: Dr. Alexander Zeier / Prof. Larry Leifer

Abstract

With analyzed we are creating a design project analyzer that enables researchers to examine digital artifacts of Design Thinking activities without requiring in-depth technical know-how. The application is set up as Software-as-a-Service(SaaS) solution. As a result it facilitates comparative Design Thinking paradigm research by making uploaded data available, thereby enabling validation of preliminary findings with sample sets of sizes, which would be unattainable for single researchers or institutions. The platform has been applied and refined within educational and professional CAD settings.

We are able to collaborate with major CAD tool developers as well as client companies. Building on the results of the first year, the proposed second phase of this project will concentrate on evaluating, validating and enhancing analyzeD.

To further foster the acceptance of our platform within the research community, development efforts will concentrate on creating and testing new ways of visualizing the collected data and allowing users to share research results with other platform users (HPI). Also we aim to optimize the data source input interface and the analysis logic and adaptation of algorithms and statistics (CDR). To validate the platform's applicability as a real-time project monitoring and guidance instrument, we will test these enhancements with real data and case studies.